150% BOM management made easy

July 8, 2019By Scott Millar

What is 150% BOM?

The terminology linked with Bill of Material (BOM) management can be cryptic. A 150% BOM is a variant structure used to define and manage all the variation of a product. It’s the result of combining many possible BOMs into one product structure. Hence, the 150% BOM will contain more parts and sub-assemblies than needed.

The single biggest challenge for designers and engineers is to be in agreement and of one mind, which is key to making better decisions and better products. It’s about effective communication. Communication throughout the product development and manufacturing process is crucial. As a result, the industry has created many terms to cope with product complexity and product variation.

Those in Manufacture will be familiar with both Make-To-Stock (MTS) and Make-To-order (MTO) strategies. Traditionally you would have to choose between time-to-market or product configurability. However, the 150% BOM balances product configurability and time-to-market in the most cost-effective way. The 150% BOM is more than an extensive list of materials. It can be used to define configurable modules (individual components or entire sub-assemblies) to simplify the creation of a final product. The 150% BOM supports the manufacturing strategy called Assemble-to-Order (ATO). This strategy requires product configurability planning ahead of time to facilitate the creation of final products from predefined parts and sub-assemblies.

Handling 150% BOM in Spreadsheets is not sustainable!

Today, many organizations have large complicated spreadsheets to manually manage all the variation of a product. Typically maintained by the engineering department. This old-fashioned product matrix approach can be very hard to maintain without error.

Introducing Actify’s End Item Manager:

The End Item Manager supports product variation across a product line. Multiple assemblies can be constructed and added to the application. Sometimes referred to as the 150% BOM. This business tool manages the extensive Bill of Materials which accommodates all possible product variation within one product line. The application will manage product revisions and catalog part number changes across development and the product life cycle. Users can observe the quantity needed for each component by selecting the desired product variant.

Once you determine which components are to be manufactured or purchased, the application will automatically create a Component Technical Detail sheet for manufactured components. Since the application auto-populates much of the component technical detail sheet with collated information from connected data sources, significant time is saved.

If you’re working with complex product variations, Actify’s End Item Manager can help you by effectively managing 150% BOMs.